Aussie media start-up collapses owing $1.3m, impacting other news media brands

An Australian media start-up that had $8.5 million worth of investment poured into it through multiple funding rounds has collapsed.

An Australian media start-up that had $8.5 million worth of investment poured into it through multiple funding rounds has collapsed.

And some of the world’s most well known media brands have become embroiled in the saga, after signing on as customers of the company but now being left out of pocket.

In May, Oovvuu Pty Ltd plunged into liquidation.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Oovvuu has been a registered business since 2014 and previously made headlines for trying to disrupt social media’s grip on news media.

Oovvuu provided video content to more than 250 media publishers around the globe and had also developed an AI system to pair the most relevant videos for journalists to choose from to attach to stories.

Some of its clients included international outfits like Reuters, BBC and Bloomberg while it had also garnered interest in the local market, from the ABC, Channel 7 and also News Corp, the owner of this publication.

According to documents filed more recently with the corporate regulator, and obtained by news.com.au, the business has just shy of $1.3 million debts owed to creditors.

Some of its creditors include Aljazeera, AFP, Associated Press, Euronews, Bloomberg and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Some of the media outlets that were customers of Oovvuu.

Andrew Smith and Bob Jacobs of insolvency firm Auxilium Partners were appointed as liquidators of Oovvuu. They were contacted for comment.

Last month, its creditors voted in favour of early approval for early destruction of books andrecords.

In total, there are 32 unsecured creditors.

As well as news outlets being left in the cold, employees are owed a further $489,000 from unpaid entitlements.

Ricky Sutton, a former employee at Fairfax Media, Nine and News Corp, co-founded Oovvuu and worked as its chief executive.

Mr Sutton told news.com.au he has not been involved with the business for the past year and was not its CEO at the time of its collapse.

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What Oovvuu advertises on its website.

Oovvuu worked with newsrooms around the world.

In 2018, Oovvuu raised $3.7 million in funding.

The following year, it received a further $4.8 million to help its plans to expand globally, particularly in the US.

The innovative business idea attracted some big name investors, including billionaire hoteliers the Mathieson family, Victorian racing identity Danny O’Brien and well known restaurateur Chris Lucas.

Some other companies also threw their weight behind the start-up, including Julian Babarczy’s new Jigsaw Investments, Cygnet Capital and Regal Funds Management.

It’s a tough time in the media landscape at the moment, with most of the major commercial media players announcing massive restructures and redundancies at the end of the most recent financial year.

News.com.au also reported on E-Mersion Media’s failure earlier this year. The Melbourne company was built around the premise of digitising traditional print magazines but went bust in May, the same month as Oovvuu, with debts of $13 million.

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